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Blockchain in the USA: Trump admin declares commitment to blockchain, government uses

In what could be seen as almost poetic, in the endless struggle between supposedly free and command and control economies; following a tweet by Francis Pouliot:

“The smallest unit of Bitcoin (0.00000001 BTC) is worth 1 bolivar, a currency used by 30 million people.”

The US Administration has come forward with a declaration of commitment to block chain, with two senators remarking at “Data Transparency 2017” that a distributed ledger was increasingly important to US Strategic and Policy considerations. Margie Graves, acting federal chief information officer at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said at the event:

“With artificial intelligence and blockchain, the [White House] is exploring a whole range of forward-leaning capabilities that might be helpful to government”

My thoughts: Your individual thoughts about Trumps mannerisms aside, the role of the President is really most heavily influenced by advisers, and policy implementation is really defined by those advisers. As far as the President goes, despite the outrage culture of 2016-2017, the role is quite limited in its ability to implement the desires of the President, short of executive order. The next President can simply remove those actions with the stroke of the pen, as we’ve seen. Keeping the congress involved and pushing changes via advocates to the judicial is the only way to make lasting changes part of law.

Is it any wonder that this is the direction when you look at the involvement of Don Tapscott, a well known blockchain advocate, and Congressional Blockchain Caucus co-founder Mick Mulvaney, who is responsible for developing a strategy of using technology in an effort to streamline bureaucracy and improving responsiveness to citizens, representative of the core requirements of the federal government.

Trump always made it clear during his campaign promises that reduction of fraud and waste, cutting spending and increasing cyber-security defense was a key part of his agenda post election. It would be completely fitting to at the very least evaluate the technology for this purpose.

The United States are not the first country looking to invest in blockchain technology, or bitcoin directly, with two Australian Senators in a Bipartisan push for the Reserve Bank to back Australian bitcoin. Once we see Bitcoin legitimised by Governments, expect extremely widespread adoption, acceptance as legal tender, and values to skyrocket.